Mike's 1993 Volvo 240 Wagon project

Background

Back in the early 80s my parents had a silver 240 wagon. I remember this car because I loved riding around in the 3rd row, rear facing seat.

Last year I started looking for a project. I already have a 2008 STI which I run HPDEs and auto crosses with. Fun car. Easy to work on. Huge aftermarket. Love it. I could talk about the STI for days, but I won't because this is a Volvo forum. More on my STI here: http://www.iwsti.com/forums/gr-members-journals/148959-hokies-2008-ssm-sti.html

For the new "project", I looked around at some classic Porsches and BMWs. I couldn't find anything with good "bones" in my budget. I've always had a thing for 240s, so when I had the opportunity to scoop up a '93 240 Wagon, I did just that. Bought it with 141K on the odometer. Automatic. Slick top! I would've preferred the manual 5 speed, but I can satisfy my "rowing" needs in the STI (6 speed manual).

My goal with the 240 is to have a ridiculously clean and reliable commuter car with some style.

Latest Picture



Mod List

Suspension and Chassis
- IPD GT strut tower braces
- IPD 25/22 sway bars.

Wheels and Tires
- Virgo wheels (15x6, ET20 with 205/60R15 Falken Ziex 912s)

Brakes
- Hawk HPS

Interior
- Pioneer MVH-X560BT Digital Media Receiver
- Vaccum gauge
- OEM tach + 52mm clock
- OEM center armrest
- OEM headrest inserts (front)

Exterior
- Dave Barton Prancing Moose decals
- Thule gutter style roof rack (1050?)

And so it began...

Here she is the day I picked her up. The exterior was fairly clean, but I took it a step further and clay-bar'd and waxed the whole car.



I also spent a fair amount of time cleaning up the engine bay....

Engine bay before:



Engine bay after:



Interior was thoroughly cleaned. Recently I pulled the carpets and vacuumed (I might have OCD). At this time I also cleaned out the rockers of debris from the last 21 years. ZERO rust! I was quite happy about that.



And then I started the "modding" (I can't help myself). So I grabbed a tach and 52 mm clock on ebay. I also installed a broken boost gauge (which only reads vacuum) from my STI. After installing the tach the odometer gear broke when I was resetting the trip mileage, so I pulled the cluster again to replace with an IPD odometer gear.





Then I really dug into refreshing the engine. Refreshments include:

- new intake manifold gasket (Volvo OEM)
- new injector caps and seals
- cleaned AMM and ICV
- new O2 sensor (Bosch OEM)
- new cap and rotor (Bosch)
- new plugs and wires (Volvo OEM plugs, Bosch wires)
- cleaned Throttle Body + new gasket
- new vacuum hoses
- new Fuel Pressure Regulator (Bosch)
- new Fuel Pump relay
- new flame trap (PCV) system to include all hoses and the oil trap box bolted to the block
- new center muffler and over-axel exhaust pieces (Starla)
- new front end links and bushings (Myele)
- new front ball joints (Lemfoerder)
- new rear wiper nozzle (Volvo OEM)
- new belts (A/C, alternator, power steering)
- new Hawk HPS pads + new clips and retainers (run the same street pads on the STI!)
- new air filter
- new intake accordion hose
- new airbox thermostat + airbox door cleaning and lubrication
- new slash guard / under tray + hardware (was missing when I purchased car)
- new IPD oil cap seal
- new oil cap
- new gas cap
- new oil dipstick tube o-ring
- seafoam'd and oil changes

Here's the engine apart during intake manifold gasket change. Also changed the PCV system and some other misc items due to the easy access!





I've picked up some random goodies from various junk yard trips:
- side trim replacements
- missing nuts and bolts
- used center armrest from junk yard
- used headrest inserts from ebay
- spare AMM and ICV
- replacement door and trunk open/closed sensors
- almost new turn signal lens to replace cracked one

Within the last month I've picked up a set of 240 turbo wheels and mounted new 205/60/15 Falken Ziex 912s.



I'm currently awaiting a shipment from IPD with some more maintenance replacements and GT strut tower braces.

That brings us to today. The 240 was dropped off at a shop this morning to pull the windshield and install a new windshield + seal.

Future plans

Maybe IPD springs and sways. Maybe an "A" cam. The brake booster seems to have a very slight leak when below 40 degrees, so I'll need to replace that before the fall.

I love your wagon.

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DanMarino said:

I love your wagon.

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fivealive said:

Looks nice, great year/model/color and no factory roof rack either! Very similar to my car, 1993 245 white/blue.

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Thanks! Fivealive, I've seen your website and drool over pictures of your wheels!

Off to a good start!
Wish I would have found a wagon w/ no roof rack or manual trans, but then I wouldn't have had so much fun over the last month swapping all that stuff

I stopped by the body shop yesterday afternoon. Some rust was discovered when they pulled the windshield, so that's being fixed before the new windshield is installed. Very minor. They plan to clean the old goop off, remove the rust, and prime the whole area. Should last for at least another 20 years!

Very nice start. You will love the car lowered and braced with good struts and shocks. If the mileage is correct, it not even broke in good.

Suspension will help, but an N/A auto wagon is intolerably slow...almost to the point of being dangerous . We know at least an M47 is just around the corner

Edit: Not to mention, the gas mileage with the auto is prolly worse than the STI, lol

photoman327 said:

Very nice start. You will love the car lowered and braced with good struts and shocks. If the mileage is correct, it not even broke in good.

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Yeah. At some point it's bound to happen. I'll probably pick up an extra set of strut housings along with all the other mounts, washers, and hardware needed to build full front assemblies off the car. Then I'll swap everything over already assembled.

The motor burns 0 oil between 4K mile changes. The previous owner had the head gasket replaced along with all of the front an rear engine seals AT THE DEALERSHIP 2 years ago. Compression is fantastic so this engine should last a long time.

Sharingan 19 said:

Suspension will help, but an N/A auto wagon is intolerably slow...almost to the point of being dangerous . We know at least an M47 is just around the corner

Edit: Not to mention, the gas mileage with the auto is prolly worse than the STI, lol

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It's definitely slow, but it hasn't bothered me that much... yet. I think I clocked a run to 60mph at ~10 seconds (possibly more).

In regard to gas mileage, I took a 6.5 hour round trip to pick up the Virgos. It was all highway and I managed 27.5 mpg! Around town I've seen it dip as low as 15mpg. The STI does get better mileage around town.

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N/A, there's not much point in running any cam (save for maybe the T) with an auto.

The 240 is back from the body shop. She has a new windshield and the windshield seam was cleaned up and fixed properly!

When I brought her home I installed the IPD GT strut/firewall braces as well as a new tailgate hinge gasket. The GT strut/firewall braces took less than 5 minutes to install. The tailgate hinge gasket was a bit trickier as I had to remove the hinge and wiring loom just to get the gasket swapped.

I broke out my good camera and snapped some photos.

New windshield and rust repaired:



Random shots:







Engine bay:





Clean interior:

Ridiculously clean!

Haha, our cars are almost twins. I'll take a picture tomorrow and post. Really clean, nice work!

Nice. Twins with mine;

Spent some time today with Plasti Dip. The black vinyl window surrounds are in pretty good shape on the 240 save for a couple places. At some point I'll remove the vinyl entirely, but as a quick fix I cut out the cracked/peeling pieces, cleaned the paint, and sprayed some plasti dip. It actually came out quite nicely.

This is my second time using plasti dip. It's not like a normal rattle can paint, so it takes some getting used to.

Cleaned and taped off:



All done:



From 3 feet away, you'd have to look hard to find the patched area. The plast dip dries to the same color as the vinyl. It also has the same finish as the vinyl. I pasti-dipped the front fender badges on my STI a few years ago and they've held up to numerous car washes and even some mid-winter high pressure washes. So while I consider this a "short term" solution for the Volvo, I think it would last a long time if I left it there.

damn clean.

Forgot I took this picture when I was replacing the tailgate hinge gasket. Probably a better way to support the hatch, but this worked well enough. I read that some people will use some rope tied to the garage door track.



I've been reading through a lot of the other project threads on Turbo Bricks. It's amazing how much work you guys get done in such a short amount of time! I'm very seriosuly considering a transmission, rear end gear, and +T upgrade now.

In the meantime, things I NEED to do:
- sort out brake booster leak (harder to do now because it only manifests itself below freezing)
- fix trans drip from trans dipstick tube (may require new pan and dipstick tube)
- timing belt change in the next 5K miles
- determine why tailgate lock intermittently locks/unlocks

Things I WANT to do:
- IPD sways
- IPD springs, new struts ... maybe
- new driver and passenger seats (reclining sparco or recaro)

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fivealive said:

If your talegate lock is having problems, it is probably related to either the lock mechanism itself (accessible by carefully removing the carpeted decor panel on the tailgate with a plastic pry bar at each plastic pop-in clip around the border) or it is the wiring through the hinge that needs to be replaced. You can buy an aftermarket replacement tailgate wiring harness from various places, or just make your own with some good wire (removing the old harness, duplicating it with new wires and reusing the plastic end connectors and then wrapping the whole thing in electrical tape).

For shocks and struts, you should try and scoop some used Bilstein HD's here. They come up for sale regularly for $250-300. Bilstein HD's have a life of 100k+ miles before they need rebuilding (assuming daily driving, not like rally driving or something) so used shocks are a pretty good way to go.

The sway bars and IPD springs do come up for sale here too, and there are other types of lowering/sport springs out there as well.

Additionally, IPD is also having their annual web/garage sale in about a month (mid-May) so that will be a good time to get 10-20% off. FCPGroton.com knows this and also heavily discounts during this period as well.

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Thanks for the suggestions!

Both left and right harnesses have no visible tears or breaks. After some searching, it looks like the right harness is the one that controls the tailgate lock. The left harness controls the defroster, wiper motor, and rear license plate lights.

I was about to remove rear panel, but figured I'd check the right harness connection first. I pulled the corner of the headliner and the connector wasn't fully seated. In fact, it was barely touching, I pressed it together firmly and the tailgate locked/unlocked 10 out of 10 times when I tested it. Gotta love the quick and easy fixes! I should've checked this MONTHS ago.

I've been keeping an eye on the For Sale forums, Craigslist, and Ebay. I will definitely check out the IPD and FCP sales.